The Omitted Name

District Clerk Hask arrived the next day with two guards, a portable writing board and the apologetic manners of a man who had already decided not to help.

He examined the workshop shelves, counted the sealed jars and asked to see the local ledger. Ysra gave it to him. Ada stood at the other end of the table, resisting the urge to take the book back each time he turned a page by its corner.

“The funeral correction was not authorised in advance,” Hask said.

“It was witnessed locally and entered within the required day.”

“For ordinary adjustments.”

“A blocked arrival is an ordinary emergency under the district rules.”

“The classification has changed.”

“When?”

Hask consulted a sheet. “At the last central revision.”

Ysra waited.

Ada could hear the guards shifting outside. One had taken off his helmet. The other was looking at Perrin's unfinished basket on the bench.

“Show me,” Ysra said.

Hask unfolded a district map. It was newer than the one on the workshop wall, printed on thick paper with binding marks added by hand. Ada leaned over it.

Dunmere was there. The reed road was there, though thinner than before. The western fields were shown as seasonal ground. Where Sable Fen should have been, there was a pale wash and a small administrative mark.

No village name.

Ada felt a strange, childish impulse to look through the window and check that the houses remained.

“They're outside,” she said.

Hask glanced up.

“The houses. The people. The church. You came through them.”

“The map does not deny habitation.”

“It doesn't name it.”

“Certain minor settlements have been consolidated for measurement purposes.”

“Into what?”

“A district bearing area.”

Ysra went very still.

Ada knew the term. She had seen it in old manuals: land assigned to carry additional distance, often where few official journeys were recorded. A bearing area did not need every lane named separately. The central Atlas could distribute a burden through its local anchors without explaining each transfer on the public map.

“How many people did you count?” Ysra asked.

“I did not conduct the survey.”

“How many did the survey count?”

Hask's mouth tightened. “The population figure is not on this sheet.”

“Then you don't know.”

“I know the classification is valid.”

Ada looked at him across the map. “Valid isn't the same as true.”

One of the guards turned towards the doorway.

Ysra touched Ada's wrist. Not a warning to be quiet forever. A warning to notice the room.

Hask opened his case and took out a second letter.

“Your licence is under review pending explanation of the unauthorised correction. However, Master Hald at the Hall of Measures has requested your records for assessment. He has also requested the attendance of your registered apprentice.”

Ada stared at him.

“My apprentice?” Ysra asked.

“Her copied route sheets were included in the district submission last winter. Master Hald considers the hand suitable for archive work.”

Ada remembered the sheets. She had stayed up late making them clean enough to survive comparison with the capital's scribes. Ysra had said good work might open a door.

She had not said a door could be a way for someone to enter your house.

“Is this an offer?” Ysra asked.

“It is a summons for assessment under the apprenticeship register. Travel authorisation is included. Refusal would complicate the review.”

There it was, finally: a threat small enough to fit inside an administrative sentence.

Ada took the letter. The seal showed the Hall's compass, the needle pointing towards a centre that was not a place but a claim.

“How long?” she asked.

“Until the assessment is complete.”

“That isn't a length.”

“It is the wording.”

Ysra's fingers tightened on the table.

Hask checked the ink jars again, recorded their numbers and left a receipt for the ledger pages he was taking. He did not take the whole book. The copied sections would travel with Ada. The original binding pages remained under seal in the workshop, which meant Ysra could not use them without recording why the seal had been broken.

After he left, Mara and Jon came in from the yard. Perrin followed, trying to look older than fourteen and failing because his face had gone pale.

“You aren't sending her,” Jon said.

Ysra looked exhausted. “If she refuses, they suspend the licence. If I refuse the inspection, they can seize the inks and records. Then every small repair here goes through the district office.”

“So we let them take Ada instead?”

“I can speak,” Ada said.

Everyone looked at her.

She hated that her hands were shaking. She put the letter flat on the table.

“I'll go. I'll take the records. I'll ask Hald where the twelve miles came from and why they erased our name.”

“They haven't erased the village,” Mara said quietly.

“Not from the ground.”

Her mother looked towards the window. Outside, someone was calling a child home for supper. A pot lid clattered. Life went on making sounds that did not appear on the map.

Ysra sat down.

“Master Hald knew me in Orison,” she said.

Ada turned. Her aunt rarely spoke about the capital. She had come to Sable Fen years before Ada was born, bringing tools, books and a habit of checking doors before discussing work.

“What did you do there?”

Ysra looked at the sealed ledger.

“Repairs,” she said.

Ada waited.

“Some of the things I repaired,” her aunt added, “should have been allowed to break.”